If anybody within Microsoft is able to do something, please contact me -- jason at zx2c4 dot com.
It should be illegal for these companies, just like utilities, to deny service to anyone or any entity in good standing for dues.
There is little hope for getting this through in the US where most politicians of any stripe hate the public, and the ones that don't have hardly any power. But it might be possible to do this in the EU.
Then, we non-EU folks need to apply for Estonian e-residency [1] which may get us EU regulatory coverage.
More regulation won't help here, because the regulation-maker is itself the hostile party.
What would help is full control over the supply chain. Hardware that you own, free and open-source operating systems where no single person is the bottleneck to distribution, and free software that again has no single person who is a failure point and no way to control its distribution.
Also “there is no appeal possible” should be plain illegal.
This. There should always be an appeal, to a real human you can talk too (not just a form letter or email).
I don’t know the number. But personally I think using the services and ‘simply’ only use them if the disappearance isn’t catastrophic and have the price be low or free while it works isn’t too bad a trade-off.
Admittedly that’s a big ‘if.’
Do not discount complete, total, utter, profound fucking incompetence as the driving reason behind this.
Getting the business verification was an astounding shitshow. With a registered C corp and everything, massively unclear instructions, UI nestled in a partner site with tons of dead ends. And then even after all the docs, it took another week because -- in an action that nobody could possibly have ever foreseen -- we had two different microsoft accounts due to a cofounder buying ONE LICENSE of O365 for excel and doing domain verification because it suggested it.
<Tin foil hat on> Microsoft doesn't want to allow software that would allow the user to shield themselves, either by totally encrypting a drive, or by encrypting their network traffic! </Tin foil hat on>
I don't think Microsoft cares (about anything besides making mo' money), but there are plenty of (state) actors that can influence the decision-making at Microsoft when it comes to these issues.
No tinfoil needed.
Microsoft the corporation may only care about making money, but a lot of very high ranking folks within MS Security aren't just friendly to intelligence agencies, they take genuine pride in helping intelligence agencies. They're the kinds of people who saw nothing wrong or objectionable with PRISM whatsoever, they were just mad they got caught, and that the end user (who they believe had no right to even know about it) found out anyway. The kind of people who openly defend the legitimacy of the FISA court.
This aren't baseless accusations, this comes from first-hand experience interacting with and talking to several of them. Charlie Bell literally kept a CIA mug on a shelf behind him, prominently visible during Teams calls, as if to brag.
Remember - Microsoft was the very first company on the NSA's own internal slide deck depicting a timeline of PRISM collection capabilities by platform, started all the way back in 2007. All companies on that slide may have been compelled to assist with national security letters. Some were just more eager than others to betray the privacy and trust of their own customers and end-users.
If Microsoft amounts to a sentient entity (i.e. is able to care about things), we have a bigger problem.
If we put the wall of metaphor between us and that interpretation, it still remains likely that "users shielding themselves" is of primary concern to Microsoft's bottom line.
Microsoft even supports Wireguard in Azure Kubernetes Service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
?
They've since moved on to the SSS strategy: Ship, Slip, Slop.
Who cares if it's OSI-approved or not, a line saying "M$, Google, and the like need written permission for every use case" would help to make those leeches honest. Just learn from the JSLint example.
plus n-word dot com hosts information about the plus n-word license which purports:
- The software will not be used or hosted by western corporations that promote censorship
- The software will not be used or hosted by compromised individuals that promote censorship
- Users of the software will be immune to attacks that would result in censorship of others
In digital services there's no such thing. There's only a damned corporation employing idiots who don't care about community.
But yes, there's a lot of critical single maintainer projects.
This is the same thing that's happened every time I've tried to have a Microsoft account. I don't think Microsoft wants to have customers who aren't rich.
60 days, long enough for the US to exploit the vulnerabilities discovered by Claude Mythos, short enough to plausibly be bureaucratic corporate awfulness by Microsoft when all is said and done. Basically freezing you and other security software out of protecting the bad guys they particularly want to get at until after the bad guys get got, then everything goes back to normal and Microsoft says "oops, here, we fixed your access."
> Effective October 16, 2025, Microsoft will initiate mandatory account verification for all partners in the Windows Hardware Program who have not completed account verification since April 2024.
> Partners who fail to complete Account Verification by the deadline, or who do not meet the requirements, will have their status set to Rejected and will be suspended from the program.
This is stupid. If Microsoft wants people to stop writing kernel drivers, that's potentially doable (we just need sufficient user mode driver equivalents...) but not doing that and also shortening the list of who can sign kernel drivers down to some elite group of grandfathered companies and individuals is the worst possible outcome.
But at this point I almost wish they didn't fix it, just to drive home the point harder to users how little they really own their computer and OS anymore.
https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/discussions/13025 https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs/pull/345601
tl;dr: ESET Antivirus flags RustDesk as a "Potentially Unsafe Application" because it is a remote administration tool, despite not flagging similar commercial products in the same way, and the WinGet Community repo policy is to block anything flagged as such. Since they were unable to update the repo the RustDesk team requested that the older versions be removed to prevent users from unknowingly installing old versions that could potentially be a security issue in the future. Apparently this has been an issue for a lot of applications especially in the VPN and remote control categories.
There is a discussion about how best to handle these sorts of situations where legitimate and desirable applications get flagged as "potentially unsafe" or "potentially unwanted" but so far it's just been a discussion with no actual changes proposed yet.
They always just tell me to ask copilot, then they open a case using copilot, and then they tell me to ask copilot again. I said I wanted to prove that the code didn't contain malicious code, and they still told me to ask copilot...
This account has been suspended because the code you submitted contains malware or potential vulnerabilities. If you believe your account was suspended in error and can demonstrate that the code you submitted does not contain malware or vulnerabilities, please follow the below steps, and contact us. . Go here: http://aka.ms/hardwaresupport 2. Click Contact Us 3. Make sure you are signed in with a user associated with the HDC account in Partner Center 4. Select Ask Copilot to receive email support.
They can’t do that for any of their own software for sure…
Windows users are in a tough spot, but with the dawn of Copilot, nobody should be surprised. Frankly, those who remain with Windows after this latest betrayal have chosen their fate.
Ah. So almost every single business in the world… suckers?
because most managers I know in my professional life go with the vendor that buys them dinner or slips them tickets for box seats.
I wouldn’t be surprised if NSA already had a list of these applications and the strategies on how to cripple them or worse, compromise them.
"Currently undergoing some sort of 60 days appeals process, but who knows."
.. and the op said:
"I have tried to contact Microsoft through various channels but I have only received automated replies and bots. I was unable to reach a human."
... which is a roundabout way of saying you did not spend lawyer hours and you did not contact them through channels that they cannot ignore: registered, physical mail, from a lawyer.
I'm sorry for these difficulties, truly, but don't tell me you can't reach a human when you most definitely can reach a human. From my own experience with an organization at least as calloused and indifferent as MS[1], as soon as I sent a real, legal communication I had real live humans lining up to talk to me.
[1] Pacific Gas and Electric
Sometimes, it's both incompetence AND malice.
Honestly, anyone still using Windows probably deserves it.
If it weren't for the current administration, I'd say it's time for regulatory action.
The FTC wasn't doing their job between 1980-2020 because of their ridiculous standard of, "if it doesn't raise consumer prices, it must be allowed." This lead to massive consolidation in many industries which of course ended up raising prices and hurting consumers anyway.
Recently they've had some wins but overall they're still failing to do their job.
are there any books or good articles with good sources about this? I'm very interested in what happened in the 80s through the mid 90s.
Because the Democrats were better at keeping them on a leash? No. Clinton was in charge 30 years ago and blew it.
The old model where the user decides which software or apps to run on their machine, is basically already replaced by a whitelist system that is managed by companies who have no interest or obligation to approve developers. Factors like ”being an individual”, an open source developer or god forbid reside outside the USA, you rely on a combination of L1 support doom loops, unjustifiable high recurring prices, kafkaesque and changing requirements, internal inconsistencies. Windows is the worst, but all platforms (except Linux) suffer from this and you can and will get hurt, delayed, and gaslit. If you haven’t, it’s just a matter of time.
I have been blocked for 6 months now with Digicert code cert renewal, for my app Payload, which will never get any media attention. The app doesn’t matter though, the approval process is per-entity (usually, a company). The point is that nobody gives a shit, because they have a monopoly/cartel and they start the validation process after they take your money.
If you are not an app publisher, the best way I can describe it is the ”pre-let’s encrypt” era of SSL certs, but more expensive, strict and ambiguous. In fact, I’ve never gone through any worse approval process in my life, and that includes applying for residency in two countries, business licenses, manual tax filings etc.
You can/should write your congressman (or whatever they are called in your country) and get better laws in place.
More specifically, it used to be feasible to distribute software between me (the developer) and my customers (the users) without a mandatory gate keeper that looks at me and decides whether I’m worthy, am from the right country, have good intentions etc. This is currently necessary on all desktop and mobile platforms except Linux. There is exactly 1 gatekeeper per platform (the platform owner who controls your device), except windows, which effectively have like 3-4 CAs that’s shrinking every year due to mergers and private equity ownership.
Software curation and reputation systems can be good, either with whitelists (say steam) or blacklists (say antivirus). I can see some use cases for it, but they should be within user control. What we have now is worse than a fearmongering Stallman rant. It’s incredibly bad, both pragmatically and philosophically.
They won't let you secure your drive the way you want. They won't let you secure your network the way you want (per the top-level comment about Wireguard). In so doing they are demonstrating not just that they can stop you from running these particular programs but that they are very likely going to exert this control on the entire product category going forward, and I see little reason to believe they will stop there. These are not minor issues; these are fundamental to the safety, security, and functionality of your machine. This indicates that Microsoft will continue to compromise the safety, security, and functionality of your machine going forward to their benefit as they see fit. This is intolerable for many, many use cases.
I think it is becoming clear that Microsoft no longer considers Windows users to be their customers any more. Despite the fact that people do in fact pay for Windows, Microsoft has shifted from largely supporting their customers to out-and-out exploiting their customers. (Granted a certain amount of exploitation has been around for a long time, but things like the best backwards compatibility in the industry showed their support, as well.)
I suspect this is the result of a lot of internal changes (not one big one) but I also see no particular reason at the moment to expect this to change. To my eyes both the first and second derivative is heading in the direction of more exploitation. More treating users like a cattle field and less like customers. When new features or work is being proposed at Microsoft, it is clear that it is being analyzed entirely in terms of how it can benefit Microsoft and users are not at the table.
No amount of wishing this wasn't so is going to change anything. No amount of complaining about how hard it is to get off of Windows is going to change anything; indeed at this point you're just signalling to Microsoft that they are correct and they can treat you this way and there's nothing you will do about it for a long time.
Open source developers are doing Microsoft a big favor when they support Windows and publish Windows builds and installers. It's a substantial effort, and apparently that effort isn't appreciated.
If all open source software dropped support for Windows, it wouldn't really affect the open source community that much. It would definitely cause headaches for Microsoft however.
Look at the Windows start menu. It used to be trivial to switch users. Two clicks, one to open the user list, another to switch - done. Now it's four: user panel, three-dots, switch user, pick user.
Look at the login sequence. They want their Windows Hello and they don't care if it works well or not - no way to get a pin or password prompt instantly, you gotta click three times (one to show a method picker, another to pick PIN entry, and lastly one to focus the goddamn field) despite no reasons to hide this UI.
It's not like they're trying to scam or sell user into something. It looks like some internal decision-makers that don't ever dogfood their decisions losing touch with the common sense.
Apple has that too, and this rot spreads elsewhere. But it's not intently malicious, a lot of things simply don't make sense - just total lack of self-reflection capabilities at the corporate level.
Quite obviously. Look at the out of box new user experience on a Windows 11 Home installation. What you get when you open a new $600 laptop from Best Buy for the first time. The entire thing is designed to drive users towards perpetual monthly recurring subscription billing for various MS services for life (OneDrive, Office, Xbox Live, Xbox game store purchased games, etc). It's a platform which is built atop a rent seeking cloud services ideology that shows no sign of ever letting up.
I've been thinking, and said before, 90s Microsoft was far from perfect, but they at least seemed to care a lot about the quality of Windows. 2020s Microsoft seems to see Windows users as a captive audience they can exploit for whatever the corporate executives fancy at the moment. It seems more like a gradual transition.
In any case, it seems to be getting more clear that Linux is destined to be the best OS for power-users.
Their first big win was when they banned the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court from accessing any of the court's documents, then deleted all of those documents. Now they're going after slightly less important enemies of the state. That bar will continue to drop as long as it's allowed to. And let's not kid ourselves: if you develop or use encryption software that Mossad can't break, you are an enemy of the state.
My advice is don't use a MS account if you can, at least not for anything critical. You don't need it for development, you can use 3rd party CAs for signatures.
I think you forgot we're talking about the kernel drivers specifically - normal scammers don't need that, they use AnyConnect downloaded from Chrome.
I think you also forgot to read it all and missed that it was supposedly some deanonymisation (ID verification) process that kicked it off, and missed that the dev has immediately verified themselves but then we're told they need to wait 2 months to wait.
Because.
It's not an automated process at this point.
Expect someone read and follow instructions in email are not that realistic anymore
Even if one doesn't want to maintain that project for purely private reasons, recommending Bitlocker as the drop-in-replacement always made it smell fishy to me.
More importantly, if development seized with no public comment, that would be one thing and may strengthen the "he got arrested" theory. However, there was some final communication, specific recommendations to rely on Bitlocker of all things, a new version of Truecrypt was released solely for decrypting existing disks and then the web page was removed, including a flag set on robots.txt to ensure it wouldn't appear on archive.org. All this concurrent to a crowd funded source code audit that, in the end, did not find any server issues or backdoors (I recall some speculation back in the day, that either known code quality issues or an intentional backdoor could have caused the exodus).
That all makes it hard to link this to an arrest of the main developer, though I dislike speculation without any hard evidence and if there is no new information, I'll keep this filed under "there is no answer".
I think he was trying to scream “Run!” without actually screaming “run”.
Yikes
https://web.archive.org/web/20260000000000*/https://www.true...
> The contempt of court was caused by Levison providing the keys printed in a tiny (4 point) font, which was deemed "largely illegible" by an FBI motion, which went on to complain that "To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2560 characters, and one incorrect keystroke in this laborious process would render the FBI collection system incapable of collecting decrypted data."
(And to be clear, that's all they ever saw of said keys)
>When my oldest son [Linus Torvalds] was asked the same question: "Has he been approached by the NSA about backdoors?" he said "No", but at the same time he nodded. Then he was sort of in the legal free. He had given the right answer, [but] everybody understood that the NSA had approached him.
so the assumption here is that TC were also asked to accept "contributions" from bioluminescent individuals, and chose not to. "just use Bitlocker" was a deafeningly loud dogwhistle, don't you think?
Windows and macOS are just too risky to do any business with. Waste of all resources.
Sure, if you're all in on MS365 (like all schools here in the Netherlands), Windows may be somewhat more handy with its native apps and all your stuff there with a single log-in.
For the vast majority of people MS365 is a requirement, but really the issue is that even minor fixes require the command line on Linux and that makes it unusable.
You can install Fedora Linux, Linux Mint or Manjaro, and it's more user friendly than Windows 11 and macOS.
For the vast majority of people an operating system is whatever comes with the computer the kid at Best Buy told them they should buy or their IT department gave them. Asking anyone to switch is basically impossible.
Look at popular unix based OS's - Android, MacOS, iOS..
Whats the first thing they do? Take the command line out back and shoot it. Whereas for linux users, their is this l33t h4cker festishization of only using a keyboard to do everything. All these distros have an extremely robust CLI under the hood, and an afterthought quasi GUI on the surface. Just good enough for grandma to check her email and watch youtube.
I hope Linux never succumbs to the lowest common denominator and people who actually enjoy tinkering will always have somewhere to go and something to learn. If that's being stuck, I hope it stays stuck.
My wife has used Linux for many years successfully and has never used the CLI once.
Which is 90% of the use of a computer. And Steam is taking care of the other 10%.
Linux is the most obvious, but there are numerous flavors of BSD as well.
> and yet... still unusable by the mass majority of people.
That info is 20+ years out of date. Distros like Suse and Ubuntu made Linux "click, click, click, it's installed" more than two decades ago. i've watched complete non-techies switch to Mint Linux long-term, the only intervention from me (their resident techie) being showing them how to boot up the USB stick installer.
Any OS that requires even once going to the command line is unusable for 99% of the population (and for me I just shouldn't ever have to).
If there isn't enough outcry they will go forward and disable more signing keys related to things like torrent clients, VPN software, eject UBO from the edge store etc etc.
Atleast now I'm a bit more certain that VC is indeed safe.
And now they're locking down Window OS, hard. Expect github and vscode to follow.
Are there some ways to combat such decisions legally?
I recently de-listed my app in the store and closed my Microsoft developer account. I was wrong for having bothered with it; just a waste of my time for no benefit. Stick to your own deployment.
Anyway, even if you could get your own cert it would be same thing: MS could revoke or blacklist your indicate cert (though usually the grounds for doing so are much less shaky than your account being suspended for vague “tos violations”)
I have stay far away from that process for a long time. Apple MacOS seems like the worst in that department IMHO.
If I submit it manually for every update it tends to go better. If more people download and install it whitelists faster. But that is highly annoying, orwellian bullshit. Might even be anti-competitive or downright illegal.
I grew up being able to download software and install it, and actually prefer that model (relying on reputational trust of the party publishing it, my own verification from other signals researched, or sandboxing techniques where appropriate).
Most users may not be aware, but a rare gem of a version of Windows that refreshingly doesn't even come with the store (or a bunch of the other unwanted bloat) is IoT Enterprise LTSC.
As a lifelong Windows user, the premise of Microsoft controlling what goes on my PC is revolting. I'm buying a tool from them, not a set of handcuffs. If it was some non-profit, open-source group running the store I might be more inclined to trust it. But ultimately the only gatekeeper on a product I own should be me. Otherwise I don't really own it, which leads to problems like this one.
And of course, it doesn't affect their earnings and there are no consequence, or significant, so they won't care and won't respond or tell what went wrong.
Can one move legally? Sure. But then it effectively is a combo of who blinks first and who can hold their breath longer.
If you publish to any closed platform including ios, mac, win, android, this is the risk you run and a condition of operating you will need to accept.
Veracrypt has kernel drivers. Microsoft's ability to control what you can sign is specific to kernel drivers, and Microsoft's trigger finger around bans exists in the world where bad drivers BSOD machines.
In general this isn't your problem.
> ...it seems like they instituted an identity verification policy, didn't notify me about it, and then I guess they suspended accounts who didn't do the verification.
So, make sure you verify your account? Check spam folder regularly? Log in via web interface at least once a year?
What ? On my computer ? Microsoft really has some nerves. My Microsoft account is scheduled for deletion.
It's a bit worrying that a sensitive app such as VeraCrypt is still distributed there.
But aside from one or two experimental attempts, also presented at BlackHat https://web.archive.org/web/20250914062843/https://portswigg...
- the consumer has nearly lost access to high end plausible deniability
On the other hand, if you get rid of Windows you don't even need Veracrypt.
It's possible that they could start issuing separate certificates upon specific request for code signing purposes, but it's doubtful they would be willing to meet Microsoft's requirements for such certificates, so their code-signing CA would not be added to Windows's trust store, rendering the certificates it issues useless.
The ACME protocol, the key automation technology that makes Let's Encrypt possible, performs domain validation only. It verifies that you, the person (or bot) making the request, are an authorized administrator of the DNS records, or port-80 HTTP server, for that domain. This is directly relevant to, and generally considered sufficient for, HTTPS.
However, domain validation is almost completely irrelevant to, and insufficient for, code signing. Microsoft's rules (and Apple's, incidentally) require establishing the identity of a legal person (individual, or preferably, company). There is no way the ACME protocol can do this, which means that the process is totally out of Let's Encrypt's wheelhouse.
Pretty sure there were historically a lot of apps that stole peoples contact lists and were signed properly. Certainly in the Android world.
Any large scale signing platform will have large oversights and be rendered useless. See the appstore / play store/windows...
[0]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Invoking-guix...
This entire "big tech overlords have to sign apps & drivers to keep you safe" concept is one giant pile of nonsense.
But if OSes are being locked down and software has trouble distributing security updates through official repositories for Windows... that's a good reason to finally make the switch. Same as why my family is on Android: I can install f-droid, disable the google store, and don't have to worry about them installing malware / spyware / adware
There's different degrees of openness. Android till 2026 was an acceptable compromise (let's see how it goed forwards). Windows is also on the decline with their account policy, not sure about this certificate revocation thing (thankfully haven't had to deal with it yet; I'm not a user myself) but it sounds like they're moving to a walled garden also
When the degree changes and gets even less open, yeah you can say "well of course, they were never truly open, they're commercial" but it's still a change and might lead people to alter their choices
Age Verification is the thin end of a much bigger wedge in "open" OS's
I really believe most "open source" big projects have been compromised long ago. We have saw all those "Foundations" taking them over with all their governance, bureaucracy and goal which do not make any sense at the first look.
One example is Fedora, which is part of "The Digital Public Goods Alliance" [0], "a multi-stakeholder initiative that accelerates the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods."
The Digital Public Goods Alliance has about every governments as member plus all the usual suspects: Gate Foundation and co.
All the leaderships have usually no background or experience in open source or even computers but are just magically placed there. But you can't say anything because they are mostly women.
You read the goals and roadmaps of those foundations and find out it has nothing to do with software or open source. It is basically there to control those projects and then have them implement all the age verification, digital id, etc.
So yes this is not a surprise all those projects are now all in absurd features such as age verification.
I would be ecstatic to be proved wrong on this, but experience tells me that is not likely to happen.
Switch to Linux if you can, and come give Shufflecake a try ;)
Aside from https://web.archive.org/web/20250914062843/https://portswigg... , there haven't been really many goes at going for plausible deniability with modern systems, and I see the segment about a Hidden OS feature in work as well.
Hoping this succeeds. Funny, eventually Shufflecake, after it gets fully capable on Linux, might have to look at making versions for Windows and Mac
I am so sick and tired of the continued erosion of the ownership model. I dont want to rent anything. But corporations see it as an avenue to increase revenue. We pay more, for less. What else is new.
The newest frontier AI models can easily find 0-days in all major software stacks, while the two biggest open source security tools on Windows can’t even ship patches.
On the driver side of things, new versions of Windows no longer trust the cross-signed certs, so you must submit your driver to Microsoft to validate and sign, so no private key to go missing. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/...
On the regular Authenticode side of things, the new CA/B Forum rules have prohibited storing new private keys outside of hardware modules for a while now, so eventually you won't be able to find a leaked private key for code signing that would still be valid.
If Veracrypt was a honeypot, the powers that be would go out of their way to make it as easy to use as possible. They'd instantly sack whoever made this decision, and reverse it.
We really need viable solutions. I have been using Linux since +21 years or so, so it does not affect me personally, but I think Linux needs to become really a LOT more accessible to normal people. And it really has not (on the desktop); all the various "improvements" on GNOME3 or KDE are basically pointless, they have not solved the underlying problem. Ideally problems should be auto-resolvable. If someone wants to use the proprietary nvidia driver, that should be a single click - on ALL Linux distributions. Instead you see some distributions have their own ad-hoc solution and other distributions have no easy solution (for simple people).
Whatever reason for this refusal / inability / choice to not contribute but rather re-create is on the reader to assume.
There is very little effort put into real progress as you point out. Sure, tons of work to move from x11 to Wayland, cool, only the developers give a shit… where is Office/365 that would make daily driving actually viable?
While WINE is impressive, it seems the only real progress for anything past Windows 7 is on paid versions of which there are at least three competing options.
Linux Desktop progress is slow because there it’s thousands of floundering side-projects without a goal of actually pulling normal users in.
Some guy somewhere deciding to delegate threat assessment to Copilot or some other automated tool.
conspiracy theories are fun and all, but 99.99% of the time it is just incompetence, miscommunication, etc.
> Mounir IDRASSI - 7 hours ago > Thank you all for your feedback and your support in getting media attention through various social platforms.
>After posting this, other developers in the security fields (like WireGuard) came forward to announce that they have the exact same issue. I understand why nobody talked publicly about this before and I'm glad that by going public I pushed others to do the same.
>Positive aspect is that a Microsoft VP (Scott Hanselman) has announced on X that he will help address this issue affecting me and others. He also reached out to me and connected me with other Microsoft people to help address this issue.
>I will let you know how things go.
Their GUI tools for package management are thin wrappers on CLI tools, but are enough hand-holding that most people should navigate it fine. More devices worked out of the box for my with Linux than Windows.
Just like if you haven't tried AI in a year and have mocked it, you need to try it again. Of you haven't tried Linux desktop in a few years, you need to try again. CachyOS really does seem to handle the driver installs and gaming compatibility well.
It's decent, but it's not all roses at all, and I wouldn't inflict it on non-techies yet.
Perhaps cachyos should maintain LTS metapackages for more than just the kernel. Video drivers, boot managers and whatnot.
For a "non-gamer" I would probably keep them on Fedora or even Debian.
[1] https://github.com/HyperSine/Windows10-CustomKernelSigners
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compare-windows-11-h...
> Hey I love dumping on my company as much as the next guy, because Microsoft does some dumb stuff, but sometimes it's just check emails and verify your accounts.
Not every "WTF micro$oft" moment is a slam dunk. I've emailed VeraCrypt personally and we'll get him unblocked. I've already talked to Jason at WireGuard.
Not everything is a conspiracy, sometimes it's literally paperwork.
(https://x.com/shanselman/status/2041977121686585396 https://xcancel.com/shanselman/status/2041977121686585396)
My only experience with Veracrypt is via a law firm I was consulting with, who used it to protect some files they were sharing with me. Law firm and their end client are both big, prestigious companies.
Never was, isn't and I guess won't be.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/...
My guess was that he got caught up in some house-cleaning. My theory being that he's still signing his code the way malware authors also do and got flagged by some automated review that's meant to force him to go get WHCP certified or whatever the new route is.
And if it were related to some kind of scan and malware flagging, the cert would have been revoked. It is not.
The point isn't (or: shouldn't be) to forcefully find your way through some back alley to make it look legit. It's to certify that the software is legit.
Trust goes both ways: we ought to trust Microsoft to act as a responsible CA. Obfuscating why they revoked trust (as is apparently the case) and leaving the phone ringing is hurting trust in MS as a CA and as an organization.
A signature is a signal, not an absolute. Although, to be fair, if Microsoft (or most other CAs) had done a better job, then that trust would have carried more weight than it does currently.
Seems rather clear that he doesn't want French jurisdiction.
So we'd better find a real solution now.
https://alf-s-room.com/etc/nandarou/binbows/binbows_english....
(and yes I know, you'd need to have the option to have "your" (haha...) OS trust it of course)
The burden of usage/access is now solely on the customers and the feeling is that regular customers are just a nuisance to be ignored.
Hello Jason!
I want to first thank you for all of your hard work developing Wireguard.
If I can find someone who is willing to put their name on it to help I definitely will, the problem is the spy agencies don't want your project to exist. It makes it harder to put resources to this. I've worked in security departments of certain companies and saw everything you could imagine.
Same for Mounir over at Veracrypt.
Both of you are developing some of the most important software that exists today.
Keep doing what you are doing by keeping everything in the open. User trust almost doesn't exist for these type of projects. Any hint of an issue would wipe that out in seconds.
This leads me to one question I do have for you zx2c4:
Why does Wireguard attempt to contact your servers and auto update on Android with no toggle to turn this off? It's a threat to everyone. Maybe it also does this on other platforms but I haven't tested them all.
I can think of reasons as to why you did this, none nefarious, but still it would be nice if you included that option so I don't have to patch each update to turn this off.
Thanks.
It was never as good as freshmeat.net even in its heyday.
Because Sourceforge is horrible to use and was at one point actively pushing malware? It's pretty obvious tbh.
Then again, this was something like 20 years ago. Back then, Sourceforge was something closer to GitHub today. It was the de facto public source repository. You could even get an on-premise version, IIRC.
Actually, this is sounding a lot like GitHub these days… not sure what that means.
if they had a reason other than 'oops mistake' its likely just going to remain in place. (sadly, that is how MS is. if you care for privacy maybe go to BSD)
I'll throw my Windows laptop out of a (pun intended) window on the exact second I'll secure viable and sustainable income using Linux. I know it can be done, but so far it's outside of my circles.
